Category: theology

One reason: This post from a while ago about Kamau Brathwaite, Picasso, and writing. Brathwaite famously said “the hurricane does not roar in pentameters.”

Revisiting that post meant listening to “Behold The Hurricane” by The Horrible Crows (Brian Fallon and friends) on repeat for a few hours.

I’ve also been talking/writing a good bit about the 3000 dead Americans in Puerto Rico.

There are hurricanes everywhere.

I have had extreme ups and downs today. I have spoken with people who have had extreme ups and downs today.

For weeks, I have been tackling theodicy from all kinds of angles. I can’t come up with anything better than the upshot of Harold Kushner: that physics are real and there are things that God perhaps cannot control.

I can’t settle for “chooses not to control.” I have to go with “cannot” control. I can give up omniscience, but I cannot give up goodness and mercy and love.

It strikes me that part of what we do here is behold the hurricane.

That’s different than just staring into the abyss. Beholding something implies some kind of action. There’s some sense of tarrying. If I were to write a theology of suffering, it would start with the idea that God tarries along side us, and beholds the hurricane.